MDM9615

The Qualcomm MDM9615M is the baseband chip used in the iPhone 5. It is a 28 nm LTE (FDD and TDD), HSPA+, EV-DO Rev B, TD-SCMA modem and allows for multi-spectrums, multi-mode LTE support. It is responsible for transmitting simultaneous voice and data transfer on LTE (provided the carrier has the infrastructure to allow simultaneous voice and data transfer.)

Right next to the Qualcomm MDM9615M is the Qualcomm RTR8600 multi-band/mode RF transceiver. The RTR8600 is paired alongside the MDM9615 to support various bands, including 5 UMTS bands, and over 5 LTE and 4 EDGE bands.

Contents

Baseband Firmware

The firmware for the baseband chip comes in either Mav5-X.XX.XX.Release.bbfw files (for the iPhone 5, iPad 4 and iPad mini 1G) or Mav7Mav8-X.XX.XX.Release.bbfw files (for iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPad Air and iPad mini 2), with X being the version digits. The BBFW file is just a renamed standard ZIP archive and contains a couple of .mbn files which are all digitally signed with a certificate from Qualcomm - similar to the iPhone 4S.

One notable difference to the iPhone 4S baseband, is that since the iPad 3 and iPhone 5, the main baseband code is entirely running on the Hexagon DSP.

Looking at strings found in the baseband, this is based on the same source code base as used on older qualcomm chipsets by other manufacturers (like HTC).